The Official September NPD Thread (Data at 6:30 PM EST ~4 hours from now)

[TheSource]

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2285

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NPD will release September figures for the USA videogame industry on October 16^th at 6:30 PM EST. The data will cover sales for August 31 to October 4, a period of five weeks. Vgchartz Americas figures for the same period are already available, and by scaling down the data for just the United States, we can estimate what NPD will report. August and October NPD figures are both four week periods.

 

On a monthly basis, we expect NPD to report that Xbox 360 saw a large increase in sales because of the three sku price drop on September 5. Whereas NPD reported Xbox 360 sold an average of about 50,000 units per week in August, we expect Xbox 360 to average over 75,000 per week in September data – pushing the total north of 375,000 units in the USA. For the Americas, VGC has Xbox 360 at nearly 430,000. Wii sold 453,000 units in the USA August NPD report. VGC data has Wii at 655,000 for the five weeks of September in the Americas. As a result, we expect a small rise in weekly Wii sales from the August reporting period to September, from about 113,000 to about 120,000 units per week. DS in contrast, should be up on a monthly basis, but down slightly on a weekly average basis. Nintendo sold 518,000 DS portables in August according to NPD, we expect NPD to report the figure closer to 605,000 for September, a drop in weekly sales from ~130,000 to ~120,000. PSP dropped a bit as well, as the Madden-PSP bundle was phased out. In NPD August, the USA weekly sales rate for PSP was about 63,000. For September, we expect that rate to drop about 25%, to 48,000 units per week. PS3 is a similar story. In August, NPD reported it sold 46,000 per week in the USA (185,000). For September, we expect a slight drop in weekly PS3 sales (to 44,000) to be hidden by the larger monthly total which should rise to 220,000 on the longer tracking period. PS2 should be down on a weekly basis as well. We expect NPD to report PS2 sold 150,000 units in August (30,000/week) after selling 144,000 in August (36,000/week) as the $200 Xbox 360 arcade starts to look like a cheap alternative to the PS2.

 

Below are VGC September figures for the Americas:    

 

Platform	6-Sep	13-Sep	20-Sep	27-Sep	4-Oct	Total
DS	149,838	138,880	122,798	131,769	123,833	667,118
Wii	142,176	165,790	102,132	132,603	112,772	655,473
Xbox 360	97,769	93,740	74,358	77,532	86,044	429,443
PSP	61,206	55,605	52,244	51,478	48,958	269,491
PS3	54,307	47,859	43,044	46,258	54,842	246,310
PS2	34,729	32,727	29,946	35,947	32,903	166,252

 

Software sales for this month are down both year over year and from last month. In August, Madden 2m copies within a few weeks of release. In September 2007, Halo 3 sold 3.3m in the USA in its first month and it helped push Xbox 360 to over 500,000. There were no releases of comparable caliber this September. However, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed did take four of the top ten spots for the month, with sales of 1.3m in the Americas. Rockband 2 and Mercenaries 2, both new Xbox 360 debuts, also sold over 200,000 alongside erstwhile Wii hits Mario Kart and Wii Play. Wii Fit sold over 500,000 units as well. Rounding out the top ten was the Xbox 360 version of Madden. Had Lego Batman had more time to sell in the period it took would have taken multiple spots in the bottom of the top ten. As always, simply multiply the VGC Americas data below by 0.9 to estimate what NPD will report for the USA.

 

	Top Aug 31 to Oct 4 Games	Platform	Publisher	Americas
1	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	X360	Lucas Arts	592,190
2	Wii Fit	Wii	Nintendo	547,874
3	Rockband 2	X360	EA	485,370
4	Mercenaries 2: World in Flames	X360	EA	354,605
5	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo	300,009
6	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	PS3	Lucas Arts	280,911
7	Mario Kart Wii	Wii	Nintendo	280,289
8	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	Wii	Lucas Arts	280,194
9	Madden 2009	X360	EA	198,602
10	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	PS2	Lucas Arts	179,592

 

 

While the sales of Xbox 360 were the main story this month, October will have a number of software stories to watch. Rockband 2, Wii Music, Little Big Planet, Guitar Hero, Fallout, Saints Row, and others will be released. Given the semi-perpetual status of Wii Play and Wii Fit in the top ten, it should be interesting to see which games crack the top ten. With rumors of sharply increased Wii supply for October, Nintendo may maintain its stranglehold on top software despite the big releases on rival platforms. Judging by the success of Rockband 2 on Xbox 360, music games could potentially take up anywhere from 4-8 of the top ten spots next month.

 

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Thats the preview.

 

 

Five weeks of data for September, vs. four in August and four next month. The timeframe is August 31 to October 4.

 

360 had a price cut at the begginning of the period so VGC data showed a large uptake in weekly sales. Wii increased a bit as well on a weekly basis.

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Keep it civil guys. Its pretty much guarenteed that 360 beat PS3 this month